Description

During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for.show more

About Graham Greene

Graham Greene was born in 1904. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, he worked for four years as sub-editor on The Times. He established his reputation with his fourth novel, Stamboul Train. In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia, described in Journey Without Maps, and on his return was appointed film critic of the Spectator. In 1926 he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church and visited Mexico in 1938 to report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote The Lawless Roads and, later, his famous novel The Power and the Glory. Brighton Rock was published in 1938 and in 1940 he became literary editor of the Spectator. The next year he undertook work for the Foreign Office and was stationed in Sierra Leone from 1941 to 1943. This later produced the novel The Heart of the Matter, set in West Africa. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography - A Sort of Life, Ways of Escape and A World of My Own (published posthumously) - two of biography and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews, some of which appear in the collections Reflections and Mornings in the Dark. Many of his novels and short stories have been filmed and The Third Man was written as a film treatment. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.show more

Review quote

"The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings" -- V. S. Pritchett "The power and energy of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, and ideal communism even more Christian than Communism. Its unit is the individual, not any class" -- John Updike "No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than did Graham Greene" The Times "Graham Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature" John Le Carre "The Power Tnd The Glory's nameless whisky priest blends seamlessly with his tropical, crooked, anticlerical Mexico. Roman Catholicism is intrinsic to the character and terrain both; Greene's imaginative immersion in both is triumphant" John Updikeshow more

Review Text

"The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings" V. S. Pritchettshow more